News

Building trust in news media is a major challenge in an age of political propaganda, public relations and social media abuse, but editors, reporters and media scholars across the world are showing fresh enthusiasm for the craft of journalism.

This week the World Editors Forum (WEF) meeting at the World News Congress in Cartagena, endorsed five principles to help rebuild trust in professional journalism. Meanwhile, half a world away in Hong Kong, media academics and journalists from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Korea launched the East Asia Media Forum to counter the rise of hate-speech and propaganda in the region.

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has joined the oral statement delivered today (22/06/2016) by Reporters without borders (RSF) at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and also co-sponsored by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), PEN International, Article 19, the International Press Institute and 25 non-ECOSOC NGO’s to demand the immediate and unconditional release of Sebnem Korur Financi, Ahmet Nesin and Erol Önderoglu and to call for the withdrawal of all charges against all participants to the solidarity campaign with the Kurdish daily Özgür Gündem.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović told an international media freedom delegation today that she supports efforts to protect the independence of national public broadcaster HRT and to repeal her country’s controversial ‘shaming’ law.

Facebook is shelling out to make its live streaming service popular, and media companies have been among the biggest beneficiaries. In sum, the social networking giant has signed 140 contracts with various celebrities and news organizations worth a combined $50 million, The Wall Street Journal disclosed Tuesday. The biggest paydays have gone to BuzzFeed, The New York Times and CNN, which inked annual contracts of $3.05 million, $3.03 million and $2.5 million, respectively.

“There are still challenges, and we haven’t even talked about state and local laws that have been piling up while the FAA lumbered toward today. But the future of drones in journalism is much brighter today than it has ever been.”

Sixteen news organizations are spending the summer testing strategies for building trust on social media. These outlets are trying new kinds of posts or reframing the way they share stories. They’re having internal conversations about what they wish their audiences knew about them, and what actions they hope their audiences will take instead of just consuming the content.

The driving idea behind the project is that social media is about relationships, and relationships are built on trust. Under the large umbrella of audience engagement, there’s a need for social media strategies to focus on building better relationships, not just effectively sharing content.

Materials

This week is World Refugee Week. Take a read of our report on how media cover migration. Press Release | Foreword | Introduction | Recommendations Migration is part of the human condition. Ever since humankind emerged out of East Africa it has been on the move – searching for a better climate, looking for supplies of food and water, finding security and safety.Migration has suddenly jumped to the top of the news agenda. During 2015 journalists reported the biggest mass movement of people around the world in recent history.

Television screens and newspapers have been ﬁlled with stories about the appalling loss of life and suffering of thousands of people escaping war in the Middle East or oppression and poverty in Africa and elsewhere. Every day in 2015 seemed to bring a new migration tragedy: Syrian child refugees perish in the Mediterranean; groups of Rohingyas escaping persecution in Myanmar suffocate on boats in the South China Sea; children ﬂeeing from gang warfare in Central America die of thirst in the desert as they try to enter the US.

In response to this crisis the Ethical Journalism Network commissioned Moving Stories – a review of how media in selected countries have reported on refugees and migrants in a tumultuous year. We asked writers and researchers to examine the quality of coverage and to highlight reporting problems as well as good work.

Activities

For 25 years Statewatch has been working to publish and promote investigative journalism and critical research in Europe in the fields of the state, justice and home affairs, civil liberties, accountability and openness. We invite you to join us in London on 25 June 2016 at our Conference where there will be:

Workshops and discussions on the refugee crisis in the Med and in the EU; mass surveillance; the EU’s crisis of legitimacy and accountability; the policing of protest and criminalisation of communities; racism, xenophobia and the far right; strategies of resistance and the defence of civil liberties.

The Ethical Journalism Network’s director, Aidan White, will be participating at the Second European Media and Information Literacy Forum in Riga, Latvia from 27 June 2016 – 29 June 2016. Watch the EJN’s Director, Aidan White, speaking at the first event in the series in Brussels here.

The Ethical Journalism Network’s director, Aidan White, will be speaking at the inaugural Aegean Summit in Athens on July 1st. The event hopes to become a forum for new and independent media in the Euro-Mediterranean & MENA with international speakers and participants.

The EJN will be participating in the session on the second day of the summit focusing on how migration & refugee crisis is being covered in the region’s media, referring to the findings from the EJN’s Moving Stories report on how media cover migration. The session will also explore how to work collaboratively to improve media literacy, responsible communications, tackle hate speech & intolerance, and strengthen self-regulation of independent media.